


Abusus Non Tollit Usum

by BrighteyedJill



Series: Habeas Corpus [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: HYDRA Trash Party, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Past Abuse, Shower Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 08:54:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10434033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrighteyedJill/pseuds/BrighteyedJill
Summary: There's only one thing that would make Bucky take on this mission.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Long ago I promised my trash friends a small prequel. Sorry it took so long!

Bucky gulps in air. His heart slams against his chest like he’s been in combat. Has he? The smell of blood seeps past the all-consuming instinct to fight, and that’s when he comes back to himself. He’s crouched in the back of a box truck, surrounded by bodies with smashed-in face, broken necks, and bullet wounds. There’s another body safely under him: unconscious, but still breathing. Alive. 

The back doors of the truck clang open. Romanov holds her guns steady with Barton at her side, bow drawn. 

Bucky keeps his hand on the mission’s chest---Steve’s chest. The fight is returning to him in flashes of sound and smell, stuttering frames of image. “I got him,” Bucky says, and lowers the Sig he’s holding. He turns his attention to Steve. Romanov is more than capable of dealing with any Hydra survivors; he can relax. When Bucky reaches down to touch Steve, his hands are covered in blood.  
\--

“They had a needle, Steve.” Bucky can close his eyes and feel how it would have been, how it had been so many times, ice shooting through his veins, then darkness. He feels a bit like a skipping record, but he hasn’t gotten his point across yet. “A needle.”

“I was only out for a few hours.” Against the crisp white of the infirmary sheets, Steve still looks too pale.

“That’s plenty.” A dozen vivid suggestions spring to mind of what Hydra could do to a man in ten minutes, let alone a few hours. He holds those suggestions behind his teeth and says instead, “They could have taken you anywhere. Done whatever they wanted.”

“You would have come for me.” Steve reaches out to squeeze Bucky’s hand. His skin is warm, his fingers clean, not bloodstained. “Besides, I’m not afraid of torture.”

“Oh, a tough guy,” Bucky says, slipping in a hint of Brooklyn, just to make Steve chuckle, but he can’t laugh in return. The torture, the kind Steve is thinking of, is not what he’s afraid of. Hydra’s other methods for breaking its toys hold far more terror. Then a worse possibility drops into his mind, drowning out everything else. “What if they’d wiped you? There are plenty of facilities where it can be done. Doesn’t take long at all.”

“Hey.” Steve tightens his grip on Bucky’s hand. “I won’t let them take you back.”

“I know.” Bucky dredges up a smile for Steve. He does know that the team would come after him, but he won’t mention that there probably wouldn’t be anything left worth rescuing. He won’t burden Steve with that. In fact, if Bucky has his way, the dark possibilities that plague his nightmares will never even cross Steve’s mind.  
\--

Stark (and his frighteningly competent staff) assure Bucky they could figure out some kind of countermeasure or defense that would nullify or even reverse the chair’s effects in the event Hydra got their hands on one of the Avengers. One of them even shows him a nifty three-dimensional projection of a machine that rebuilds neural networks. It’s all very promising. Of course, to be certain, they’d need full schematics of the chair or, preferably, a specimen that wasn’t blown to bits. 

Romanov puts out feelers, looking for a likely facility. 

“It won’t be undefended,” she tells Bucky as she’s pointing out the location on a map.

“I know.” He stares at the blinking dot on the display and reminds himself that Alexander Pierce is dead. It won’t be that bad.

“They’ve wiped the data every place we hit. They’re not going to leave those schematics anywhere we can get to them.”

“I’ve got a plan.” He’d been with Hydra for years, decades. There’s nothing they can do to him that they haven’t already done before, surely. When he realizes the fingers of his left hand have started to crush the edge of the console, he snatches his hand away. When he looks up, Romanov is studying him.

“This is why you haven’t let them see you. You haven’t let any Hydra agent live. You don’t want them to know you’re with us.”

He looks down at his body, the one all Hydra knows as the Winter Soldier, the one he’s been occupying since he fished Steve out of the river. “I’m the only advantage we’ve got.”  
\--

Every time they go out on a mission, Bucky could die. He’s got no complaints. What he has now is more than he ever thought he’d get. But this mission isn’t anything so easy as dying. He’ll still do it, of course. It’s worth any price to know that Steve will never wake up in a chair not knowing his own name. 

Just in case that price includes Steve never wanting to touch him again, he makes the most of the wait for Romanov to finalize the mission details. 

He touches Steve whenever he can: folding his hand over Steve’s when Steve passes him his morning cup of coffee, holds him around the waist and breathes in the smell of his neck when they’re in the elevator, rubs his cheek against Steve’s thigh as he fingers Steve, opening him up until he’s good and ready, until he _begs._

Bucky intends to store up as much sense memory as he can, to weave the memories into a sanctuary, a place he can go while it’s happening. And a comfort for after, too, if his secondary objective can’t be completed, if Steve finds out what Bucky will have allowed to happen in the service of this mission. What’s he’s allowed to happen so many times before. Bucky hopes it doesn’t come to that, of course. He’d rather Steve never find out. But even if Steve never speaks to him again, it will be worth it to know Steve is safe.  
\--

The day before they’re meant to leave, Steve leads a final training session for the whole team. They drill the maneuvers they’re planning to use for the distraction phase of the plan. Bucky stands in for Hydra soldiers and critiques the weak spots he sees. He won’t be there to guard Steve, so the others must be flawless. While he drills Wanda in a Judo throw, he catches Steve watching from the corner. He tries to memorize that proud smile. Even if he knows it’s meant for Wanda, Bucky’s not above embellishing the memory with a little imagination. 

After everyone’s been dismissed, Bucky follows Steve to their quarters, letting Steve’s running commentary about the training wash over him like white noise. As soon as they’re behind closed doors, Steve strips off his sweaty workout clothes, tossing them unerringly into the hamper. He seems not to mind being naked—and why should he? Steve has nothing to hide, and never has, as far as Bucky’s concerned. He’s generous with his body: using it, displaying it, giving it away, as if he had no idea it could be truly violated, turned against him, or even taken away. That’s as it should be. Steve should never have to live with the constant fear that clings to Bucky like a second skin.

Bucky trails Steve to the bathroom and stands in the doorway while Steve fiddles with the shower controls; he’s always liked the water steaming hot. Without breaking his monologue, Steve steps into the luxurious shower and beings soaping himself up. 

Bucky only meant to watch—to put away a few more mental pictures to get him through what’s the come. Every inch of Steve’s marvelous body has already felt Bucky’s touch; he’s done everything he can think of to bring Steve pleasure, to wring from him soft moans and sudden gasps, precious losses of Steve’s usual self-control. Perhaps it’s greedy to want more, but Bucky does. 

When Steve turns his back to lather up shampoo, Bucky strips efficiently and stalks across the bathroom floor. Stepping into the spray, he presses against Steve’s body, his hard cock snug against Steve’s ass. 

Steve’s hands come back to grasp Bucky’s hips, then he turns his face into the spray to wash away the suds. “I didn’t know you found training exercises so hot.”

“Not training exercises. You.” To Bucky’s relief, Steve doesn’t pry. He lets Bucky stroke him until he’s hard, finger him open diligently and thoroughly, and fuck him until his shouts echo against the wet tiles. He lets Bucky do whatever he wants, and he doesn’t try to turn around and look. He lets Bucky hide the body that has brought him only shame.  
\--

Relearning the intricacies of the Soldier’s uniform, with half a dozen buckles up each shin and another dozen elsewhere on the body armor, means Bucky takes longer to suit up than Steve. In the early morning light of the hangar, completing a final check of weapons and supplies, Bucky can’t help sneaking a few touches—brushing Steve’s hand as he reaches for a knife, steading himself on Steve’s shoulder while he adjusts a strap on his boot, smacking him on the back when he chokes on his laughter at one of Barton’s jokes. The memories of these moments will be enough, even if he is never allowed to touch Steve again after this. The sacrifice will be worth it, if it means Steve will never face what Bucky has.

“You boys done powdering your noses?” Romanov calls from the jet.

“We’re coming!” Steve reaches out to squeeze Bucky’s shoulder. “Everything’s going to be fine,” he says, then turns and jogs onto the plane. 

Bucky stays a moment, closing his eyes to savor the sensation of Steve’s touch, and then he follows.


End file.
